The funny thing about it, Connor mused, here he was, a confirmed bachelor and he actually really liked her kids. In all honesty, he had never given much thought to kids at all, other than not wanting any. And yet, he liked hers.
Not because they were hers—if anything her children served as a reminder of the life Brianna had had with another man—but because both of them were so lively, so precocious and really amusing, the latter rather unwittingly.
“She’s just the flavor of the month, that’s all,” he told himself. “Don’t try to read anything more into it, Fortunado.”
But even as he voiced what was his prevailing sentiment out loud in his car while he was driving to Brianna’s house, Connor wasn’t quite convincing himself that he was telling the truth.
That was because he found himself looking forward to seeing her—and those kids of hers—the way he couldn’t remember looking forward to seeing any of the myriad of women who had passed through his life since just after his adolescence took hold.
“What the hell are you thinking?” he asked himself, annoyed. “You haven’t even kissed the woman yet.”
He wasn’t attracted to her, Connor silently argued, he had just gotten caught up in a fantasy, that’s all. All this wedding talk and planning had made him wonder what it would be like if he gave in to his family’s pressure and joined the ranks of the newly married.
C’mon, Connor, get a grip. You don’t want any of this. You’re just curious, that’s all.
He pushed all thoughts of Brianna and her children aside. Today would probably be the last time that he would be seeing any of them.
Or at least the second to last time, he amended—just in case.
Before he knew it, Connor found himself pulling up to the curb in front of Brianna’s house.
How had that happened?
He had blanked out the entire way from his parents’ estate to here, Connor realized. He supposed he should just be grateful that he hadn’t gotten into some sort of an accident.
It was a sobering thought.
* * *
“He’s here, Mama. He’s here!” Ava announced excitedly, jumping up and down at the window in the living room.
Brianna automatically glanced at her watch, although there was really no need. The man had been turning up like clockwork every day.
“I’m going to let him in!” Ava declared, hurrying from the window that faced the front of the house and running to the door.
“No, I am!” Axel announced, trying to beat his sister to the door.
“Neither one of you are opening the door,” Brianna informed her children sternly. Short of putting a leash on them, how did she get this across to them? “Nothing’s changed. You’re still too young to open the door to anyone.”
“But, Mama, it’s Connor,” Ava wailed, stopping—unwillingly—just short of the front door.
“It’s who?” Brianna asked, looking pointedly at her daughter.
Ava sighed. It was a huge sigh for such a little girl. “Mr. Fortuna-dough,” she dutifully said, correcting herself because that was what her mother was expecting to hear.
Brianna nodded. “Better.”
Her eyes swept over the pint-size welcoming committee. Then, motioning both of her children aside, Brianna opened the door just as Connor was about to ring the bell.
He looked a little taken aback as he dropped his hand to his side again, then raised one quizzical eyebrow as his eyes met hers.
“My lookout told me you were coming up the front walk,” Brianna explained.
“I was looking for you,” Ava told him proudly, flashing a big grin.
“I was looking for you, too,” Axel announced, not wanting to get lost in the shuffle. It was clear that because of his mother and his sister, he felt really outnumbered.
Before Connor could respond, Axel’s eyes alighted on the big, flat box he was carrying. The boy’s blue eyes all but shone with interest.
“Is that pizza?” Axel cried, not giving Connor a chance to comment on his sister’s statement.
Rather than answer either of the children, Connor looked at their mother.
“I thought that I’d bring lunch with me and give you a break for a change.” When she didn’t say anything, he asked, “Is it okay?”
“It’s a little late to ask that question, isn’t it?” Brianna asked, amused that he’d think to ask her now. There was a lot to like about the man, Brianna thought.
Connor couldn’t tell if he’d somehow offended her with this gesture, or if she really didn’t mind. “We don’t have to eat it,” he told Brianna.
Axel looked as if he was about to burst into tears. “’Course we gotta eat it,” he declared. “What else can you do with pizza?”
Ava took their cause to the highest authority—their mother. She looked at Brianna hopefully. “We can eat it, right, Mama?” she asked.
“Yes, you can eat it,” Brianna agreed. “At lunchtime,” she specified.
The last few days Connor had begun arriving at ten rather than after one, so she supposed it was only natural that one of these times he decided to bring a take-out lunch with him.
This time it was Axel who sighed mightily. “Okay,” he agreed with something less than wholehearted enthusiasm.
“Yes, Mama,” Ava’s voice mimicked her brother’s submissive tone.
“And only after you both say ‘thank you’ to Mr. Fortunado,” she told them.
Both children turned toward the newcomer in their lives.
“Thank you!” Ava and Axel cried almost in unison. This time there was no mistaking the enthusiasm in their voices.
“My pleasure,” Connor told the duo, pretending to bow his head in acknowledgment to their thanks.
“Now go clean up your room,” Brianna told them. “Mr. Fortunado and I have work to do.” The long faces were not lost on Brianna. “It’s either that, or you go out and play in the backyard.”
That required no prolonged debate at all. Axel made his choice instantly. “Play!”
“We’ll go play,” Ava told her mother with no hesitation.
Brianna waited until her children had dashed out of the room and gone out to play before she turned toward Connor holding the pizza box. She wasn’t sure if he was just being generous, or if he felt that she was having trouble feeding him as well as her children.
“You didn’t have to bring lunch,” she told him.
“You fed me. I thought it was only fair that I return the favor, at least once.” Connor realized it was a slip of the tongue the second he’d said it. He hadn’t meant to say “at least once.” That meant he had plans to come back for lunch again—and he didn’t. He didn’t want it to sound as if he was committing to anything—because he wasn’t, he silently insisted.
“Well, I appreciate it,” she told him crisply, trying her best to be gracious.
Brianna took the pizza into the kitchen. When he followed her, she took advantage of having him there. Still holding the box, she turned toward him.
“Would you mind putting it on that shelf?” she asked, pointing to the highest shelf in the pantry.
He looked a little bemused. “Why not just leave it on the counter?”
“Simple. I don’t want Ava and Axel succumbing to temptation,” she told him. Passing the box to him, Brianna caught a whiff of the pizza. “That does smell good,” she commented with appreciation.
What he caught a whiff of was not the pizza but the very light fragrance that Brianna tended to wear. Something delicate and flowery. It made him think of that old line about stopping to smell the roses.
“Yes, it does,” he agreed in a low, appreciative voice.
Brianna felt a wave of heat flash over her entire body.
If she didn’t know better, she would have said that Connor wasn’t really talking about the pizza.
But of course he had to be, she told herself the next moment. She was letting her imagination get the better of her.
“Um, you can put the box right up there,” she told him, pointing up to the shelf above her.
As Connor started to do as she instructed, the corner of the pizza box accidentally hit a box of rice that was precariously perched on the edge of that shelf, knocking it down. The box of rice flipped as it fell and since it apparently had been opened, it rained grains of rice all over Brianna.
More than a little of the rice wound up in her hair.
Connor really didn’t want to laugh. He had a feeling that it would either make Brianna angry or embarrass her. But he couldn’t help himself. She did look rather adorable with all that rice looking as if it was woven through her hair.
“I am sorry,” he apologized, losing his struggle not to laugh as he quickly brushed as much rice out of her hair as he could.
“That would sound a little more believable if you weren’t laughing,” she told him.
He noted with relief that Brianna didn’t seem to be angry.
“Sorry,” Connor apologized again, biting his lip to keep a laugh back. “I’m not laughing,” he protested, although not very believably.
“Your eyes are laughing,” Brianna pointed out.
“No, they’re not,” he protested.
Connor continued brushing the rice out of her hair, doing his best to focus on getting the grains out and not looking at her.
“I’m not very good at this,” he confessed ruefully. He reached around her to get the rice at the back of her head.
Somehow, as he did so, Connor wound up getting much too close to her. That, in turn, led to something else. Something he hadn’t counted on.
Before Connor could stop himself, he kissed her.
It was hard to say who that surprised more, him or her.
Connor fully expected her to pull away. But she didn’t.
And he couldn’t.
At that moment it occurred to him that he had been wondering all along what it would feel like to kiss Brianna. To press his lips against hers with feeling.
When it happened, he couldn’t really begin to describe it. Couldn’t encapsulate the sensation into words.
He just went with it, losing himself in the taste of her lips and reveling in it.
Just like that, Brianna lost all concept of time and place, feeling as if she’d suddenly fallen through the mythical rabbit hole and rather than try to pull herself out of it, she just continued to free-fall, to whirl around within the endless, bottomless cylinder.
All she could do was to draw in the delicious sensation vibrating through her and—just for the moment—allow herself to enjoy it.
Pleasure reached out to every single part of her.
What if the kids come in now?
The sudden thought flashed through her mind and was enough to startle her back to reality. Brianna pulled her head away from him.
She was breathing very hard. It took a great deal of concentration to get herself under control and not sound as if she’d just raced up three flights of stairs doing double time.
Connor looked at her as if he had never seen her before and maybe he hadn’t.
Not in this light.
By doing nothing else except kissing him back, Brianna had knocked his proverbial socks off.
He had not seen that coming, and at first, he didn’t know how to handle it—or himself.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Brianna thought he was apologizing for kissing her and she didn’t want him to.
“For knocking over the box and getting all that rice in your hair,” he said, completing the sentence.
He wasn’t apologizing for kissing her, she thought. She hadn’t expected to be so happy and relieved that he wasn’t.
Despite having a relationship in her past and two children from that relationship, this was all brand-new to her.
“That’s all right,” she finally replied. “I don’t remember when I put that rice up there. It was probably stale anyway, being opened like that for who knows how long.”
Connor looked around at the mess that had spilled out all over the floor. “You have a broom around somewhere?” he wanted to know. “I’ll clean all this up.”
The offer caught her off guard even more than the falling box of rice had. In all their time together, Jonny had never lifted a finger to help her around the house. He’d get up from the table leaving his dishes, and any clothes he took off wound up on the floor. It got to the point where she just accepted that as normal male behavior. Obviously, it wasn’t.
“You’re serious?” she asked Connor.
“I knocked it over. I should be the one who cleans it up,” he told her.
“Okay.” Brianna opened the door to the tall, narrow closet located opposite the pantry. Taking out the broom and dustpan, she held out both to Connor. “Take your pick,” she said. When he reached for the broom, she said, “Okay, I’ll hold the dustpan.”
“Teamwork,” he said with an approving smile. “And by the way, I’ll pay for the rice,” he added as an afterthought.
“I already told you, it was probably stale at this point. Besides, that was the store’s own brand,” she told Connor. “It didn’t exactly cost me a king’s ransom.” She squatted down, holding the dustpan in position as he swept up the rice.
It wasn’t just the cost, it was the inconvenience—and his being clumsy, Connor thought. “I still feel bad about knocking it over.”
Brianna waved away his guilt as she rose to her feet and dumped the rice into the garbage. Turning, she squatted down again, holding the dustpan in place for Connor.
“You bought lunch, I absolve you. Consider us even,” she said.
“Speaking of even,” he said, getting the last of the rice. “Have you deposited the check yet?”
Brianna emptied the dustpan, then placed it back in the closet. She was stalling, trying to brace herself for what possibly might be coming. Was he going to tell her that he’d changed his mind about paying her? Or was he going to say that there were no funds to cover the check after all?
“I was going to do that Friday,” she said. “Do you want me to hold off?”
He looked surprised that she would ask that. “No, I was just wondering why the check hadn’t been accounted for yet.”
Her smile was somewhat sheepish as she admitted, “I just wanted to hold on to it in case you decided that you changed your mind.”
He handed her back the broom. “Cash it,” he instructed. “The funds aren’t going anywhere.”
And neither was he, he silently added.
For now.
Chapter Ten
He caught himself watching Brianna while they all ate lunch.
Watching her and thinking.
It surprised Connor that he had mixed feelings about what had just happened between them. Normally, whenever he kissed a woman, no matter who initiated the kiss, it registered as a pleasurable experience, one that, on most occasions, led to something more physical. But then, for one reason or another, the effects would always fade and he would move on to something else.
To someone else.
But this time it was different. Or it would be different, he thought. If he was inclined to get involved with Brianna. What made it different was that she came as a package deal. There were children to consider. Children he actually found himself liking.
Children who would be hurt once he left, he thought. Because he always left. No matter how long or short the relationship lasted, he never committed to it, not in any sort of a permanent way. It just wasn’t him.
And yet...
There was no “yet,” he silently insisted. Whatever this strange feeling was, it would be over with soon enough. And he’d be home again,
living the high life again.
He couldn’t think about this now, Connor silently insisted. He had a dangerous woman to track down and catch and everything else had to come second—if it came at all. Which it wouldn’t, he promised himself. Right now, he still had credit card activity to follow up on. The woman had to be out there somewhere.
A small, high-pitched voice broke into his thoughts, scattering them.
“Why aren’t you talking?” Ava wanted to know, looking up at Connor.
To cover his temporary lapse, Connor said the first thing that came to his mind. “Because I’m busy eating.”
“I can eat and talk at the same time,” Axel told him. “Why can’t you?”
This time it was Brianna who came to his rescue. “Because it’s not polite to talk with your mouth full,” she told her son.
“I don’t,” Axel protested, looking hurt as he looked at his mother. “I chew fast. See?” he asked, giving her a demonstration that involved chewing and then opening his mouth for his mother.
“Oooh, gross!” Ava cried, wrinkling her nose. “Make him close his mouth!” Her request was directed toward Connor. “He’ll listen to you.”
This was getting out of hand, Brianna thought. First he’d thrown her for a loop by kissing her, and now her children were acting out because of him.
“Axel, behave,” Brianna ordered. “You, too, Ava,” she told her daughter, who had started to laugh at her brother, pointing a finger at him because he’d been called out.
“What did I do?” Ava wanted to know, pouting.
“Axel, Ava, Mr. Fortunado was nice enough to bring over pizza for the two of you. At least try to behave like little people instead of little wild animals,” Brianna requested.
Grateful to have something to focus on besides his confused feelings toward Brianna, Connor looked at her two children.
“Would you two have liked me to bring something else for lunch besides pizza?” he asked.
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